After establishing the League of Corinth, Philip proceeded to his next project: an invasion of the Persian Empire, many times the size of his own. Philip, as his entire career shows, was no wild dreamer, but a hard-headed - and hardworking - realist. Why should he have believed the invasion of the Persian Empire a realistic undertaking?
A History of Greece: 1300 to 30 BC, First Edition. Victor Parker.
© 2014 Victor Parker. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The answer lies in how the Greeks had learned to perceive the Persian Empire. Xenophon’s story of the march of the 10,000 out of Persia in 401 BC had portrayed the Persians as weak and easily outwitted (see chap. 15). Agesi-laus of Sparta had invaded Persia in 396, made fools of two satraps, defeated the Persians in one battle, and considered a march into the satrapies farther inland. The Persians never defeated him and instead bribed his opponents in Greece to cause enough trouble for the Lacedaemonians so that they would recall him (see chap. 15). Egypt’s rebellion in the late fifth century (Diod. XIV 79) and the Persians’ repeated failure to reconquer this province (e. g., in the 370s - Diod. XV 41-43) spoke poorly of Persian military prowess; the rebellion of Artabazus, the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, just made the empire look unstable - especially when Greek generals such as the Athenian Chares and the Boeotian Pammenes could invade Asia Minor in support of Artabazus and defeat imperial troops (see chap. 16). Other events contributed to this overall picture, for example, the rebellion of Evagoras, the king of Salamis on Cyprus in the 380s (Diod. XIV 98, 110, XV 2-4, 8-9) and the so-called Great Satraps’ Revolt of the 360s (Diod. XV 90-91).
One may question the accuracy of this view of the Persian Empire as weak and ripe for the plucking. By the time Artaxerxes III Ochus (circa 359-338) became King of Persia, the Great Satraps’ Revolt had ended, and Ochus reformed the satrapal administration throughout the Empire (Diod. XVI 50 and 52). The best-known measure, greatly conducive to the empire’s internal peace, compelled satraps to disband their mercenary armies (Harding, Nr. 72A). The vigorous Ochus also oversaw the reconquest of Egypt in 343 (Diod. XVI 40-52) and set the empire on a new foundation.
Philip, however, knew nothing of such revisionism. His view of the Persians was that which Isocrates propounded in countless pamphlets (e. g., IV 140149) - an effete and feeble people. In 336 Philip sent an advance force under his second-in-command Parmenio across the Hellespont (Diod. XVII 2) and prepared for the coming campaign. Before he could attack, however, one of his bodyguards, Pausanias, who may or may not have been acting alone, assassinated him (Diod. XVI 94). Many people wished to see Philip dead or stood to gain from his death - disaffected Macedonian noblemen (Arr. Anab. I 25,1), rebellious Greeks (Arr. Anab. I 1,3; cf. I 7,3), Persian officials (Arr. Anab. II 14,5), his estranged wife Olympias, and his ambitious son Alexander (Plut. Alex. 10) -, so numerous conspiracy theories arose.
The most intriguing one turned on a bitter quarrel within Philip’s family. Philip had contracted numerous political marriages as he pieced together his “empire” - one ancient writer, Satyrus, remarked that Philip married according to whatever war he was waging at the time (Athen. XIII, p. 557). Among his numerous wives, Olympias, the sister of the king of Epirus, apparently occupied a privileged position until her son, Alexander, fell out with his father on the occasion of Philip’s last marriage with a Macedonian noblewoman called Cleopatra.
At the wedding feast her uncle Attalus, who was giving her away, proposed a toast wishing for legitimate sons to issue from the marriage. Perhaps he chose his words poorly (all present had been drinking heavily), but Alexander responded angrily to the imputation of his illegitimacy and in a drunken rage flung his cup into Attalus’ face. Attalus was the guest of honor, and hospitality obliged the inebriated Philip to defend his guest. Philip rose, drew his sword, and lunged at his own son, but tripped over his own two feet and collapsed in a drunken heap on the floor. The next day Alexander and Olympias fled. Some time later Alexander and Philip patched up their quarrel, and Alexander returned to Macedonia. Olympias, however, remained with her people in Epirus (Plut. Alex. 9).
Alexander’s position at court was ambiguous. He might have been his father’s preferred heir for now, but the Macedonian royal house had never practiced strict patrilinear succession. Alexander also had an elder half-brother, Philip surnamed Arrhidaeus. Arrhidaeus was feebleminded (Plut. Alex. 77), but in Macedonia this did not disqualify him from the succession (n. b. Plut. Alex. 10) and Arrhidaeus would actually become king after Alexander’s death in 323 (see chap. 20). Meanwhile Philip’s new wife, Cleopatra, was pregnant (see Paus. VIII 7), and Philip, a vigorous sixty, showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. Time was not necessarily on Alexander’s side: Cleopatra might come to occupy the position at court which Olympias had once held and a son of Cleopatra’s might displace him as preferred heir (see chap. 21 for a parallel for this situation). Additionally, the quarrel between Alexander and his father had been patched up rather than laid to rest. Olympias, who wielded much influence over Alexander, never made up her quarrel with Philip nor could she forgive Cleopatra (she would in fact have Cleopatra and her infant son murdered later on [Paus. l. c.]) and when Philip fell victim to an assassin’s dagger, people had their suspicions about Olympias and Alexander.
Whatever the case, once Philip lay dead, the first order of business for the nobles present was to arrange the succession. With a surprising swiftness, which itself has aroused suspicion, the nobles closed ranks behind Alexander and proclaimed him king. He was barely twenty years old.
Alexander first had to assume all his father’s positions in a multistate empire. He went to Thessaly where the Thessalian League elected him tagos (Diod. XVII 4). At Corinth the Council of the League of Corinth recognized him as the League’s leader (Diod. XVII 4 - using the word autocrator, “sole ruler,” instead of hegemon). Philip’s empire, however, encompassed more than just Greece, so in the spring of 335 Alexander began a long campaign in the north to assert his authority there. The campaign took him through Thrace to the Danube’s delta and, briefly, even across that river; and from there through Illyria (Arr. Anab. I 1,4-6,11).
While Alexander was away in the north, a rebellion broke out in Thebes with Athenian support. Towards the end of 335, Alexander marched from Illyria into Thessaly and onwards into Boeotia where he appeared before the Thebans even knew that he was on his way. Fearing lest the rebellion spread rapidly, Alexander dealt with it severely. He took Thebes by storm, and his troops carried out a massacre. Afterwards Alexander - acting through the Council of the League of
Corinth - had Thebes razed to the ground (Arr. Anab. I 7-9; Diod. XVII 8-14). From the sale of prisoners into slavery and other booty he also collected 440 talents (Cleitarchus, BNJ 137, Fr. 1; Diod. XVII 14). The example worked: the Athenians sent him an official note of congratulations (Arr. Anab. I 10,3). Alexander had consolidated his rule over his father’s empire and could now undertake his father’s work - the invasion of Persia.
World History
